


Unfinished Business

by fourthlinefic (XylophoneCat)



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Curses, Established Relationship, M/M, Memory Loss, Off-screen death, Romance, happy endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-07 06:46:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16403327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XylophoneCat/pseuds/fourthlinefic
Summary: When Sid meets an attractive stranger in the woods, it throws up questions about his life that he finds himself struggling to answer. It doesn't help that his memories are dark and hazy, but can Geno help shed a little light on the matter, to help put to rest something that has haunted them for the last hundred years?





	Unfinished Business

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Why_so_drama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Why_so_drama/gifts).



> Beta'd by the wonderful N. I would die without you.

It was a perfect, crisp morning, like the first bite into a shiny red apple. Sid had been up early enough to watch the sunrise as he had trekked up to the lake, had watched the sky run through orange, pink and purple, before settling down into a sharp, clear blue. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but there had been heavy snow in the night, and the world around him had turned white and glittering, and it would have been really fucking pretty if Sid weren’t right in the middle of it. 

“Godforsaken country,” he muttered to himself as he struggled through a thigh high snowdrift. “Cold, powdery bullshit.”

But the lake, when he finally got there, was as clear as ever, the ice silvery and enticing as always. There was no sign that snow had even fallen there in the first place, no snowbank around the edge like there would be if someone had scraped it clean. Sid had long since given up trying to explain it, just grateful that he didn’t have to do it himself.

He always felt that first scrape of his blade deep in his soul, that perfect sound of steel cutting into the ice like a balm on all nagging worries. It filled him with a strange, almost childlike delight to see the cuts of his skates on the ice, laid out like a storybook for anyone to read if only they knew the language. Short scratches where he had picked up speed.Two long unbroken lines that looped and swirled where he had just let himself glide, feeling the bumps and irregularities of the frozen water under his feet. One long, thick scrape where he had gotten lost in his thoughts, and had to stop sharp before he went flying headfirst on to the snow covered grass.

Some days, like today, Sid could see the shapes of fish moving under the ice, ghostly pale against the dark water. They scattered like shard of glass when he skated over them, but if he lay still on the ice, he could watch them swim in lazy circles. He very easily lost track of how long he watched them, they way they moved, like smoke behind a mirror, hypnotising him into a trance. It was like sliding into another world, full of strange, dark shapes that shifted and changed any time Sid tried to get a good look at them. His own face suddenly loomed out of the black, pale and cold; staring back at him and mouthing strange silent words, black air bubbles streaming from between his lips. And then he woke up, shivering on the ice as if he had been plunged down through it into the deathly cold water below.

He picked himself up from the ice, coughing hard as if trying to dislodge something from his lungs. His skates clattered under him as he tried to get to the edge of the lake, unable to shake the feeling that he was drowning. He flopped backwards into the dry snow, staring up at the sky, at the tops of the pines stretching like church spires into the blue. A second stretched out into a minute, and he slowly came to the awareness that something was watching him. It felt like a crackle of electricity against his skin, and he propped himself up on his elbows so that he could look around.

When he saw the bear, he nearly jumped clean out of his skin. It was a thin looking thing, and certainly an unusual sight for that time of year, but it looked healthy enough - its coat was dark and glossy, its nose as black as smut, and its eyes shone with an intelligence that Sid found vaguely unsettling. He hoped that whatever had attracted the bear, it wasn’t hunger, because there was no way he was ready to be a midwinter snack. But it didn’t seem to want to venture into the clearing, perfectly happy to hover at the edge among the trees and just watch Sid. He realised that it had probably been there while he was still lying on the ice, and it hadn’t taken the chance to eat him then. Cautiously, he raised a hand.

“Hello.”

The bear made a bear noise, startling a surprised laugh from Sid. It sounded like the bear had said hi.

“ I’m Sid.”

The bear snuffled at him, and Sid nodded, as if it had said something deeply profound.

“For sure. Sometimes that’s just how it is.”

The bear grumbled again, and then, as if at some invisible signal, or its own decision that this conversation wasn’t worth its time, it lumbered to its feet and disappeared back into the woods.

“Nice to meet you,” Sid called to its retreating back, feeling like something not quite of this world had happened. He brushed the snow off his leather boots and then pulled himself back up to his feet, pushing back onto the ice in one fluid movement.

There had been something about that bear. It had looked at him as if it knew Sid, which was...well it was monumentally stupid.

He stayed out on the ice until the sky started to darken, the light fading as the sun slunk towards the horizon. Golden light poked through the trees, sharp as needles, and Sid decided it was probably time to head home, lest he run into a bear in the dark. He would prefer not to run into a bear at all if he was being honest, but certainly not in the dark.

He must have gotten home at some point, because he had no memories of the rest of the evening, only dreams of floating underwater, and then a warm smile and a deep laugh. He thought that it could have been his father’s, certainly someone very important to him. The memory of it filled him with warmth, and it kept him going for the hike back up to the lake the next morning. Sid didn’t know what called him back up there, but it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do today, so he strapped on his skates.

He hadn’t been out there very long when he felt the same prickling awareness of being watched. He cast his eyes around, part excited, part anxious, for the bear, and was disappointed when he couldn’t see it. Only a tall man, with dark hair emerging from the trees at the edge of the lake clearing.

They both stood there for a second, watching each other carefully. It was strange, Sid thought. He had been so willing to accept the bear’s existence there among the trees, but when it came to another person he was suddenly filled with a deep suspicion. He backed up further out onto the lake, before calling out.

“Hi there.”

The man said nothing until he had reached the edge of the water, and Sid realised that even on skates, he was a good two inches shorter than this stranger. His face was what his mother would describe as ‘homely’, but there was something appealing in the way his lips curved, the look of certainty in his eyes, and the confidence with which he carried himself. Actually, he was very attractive.

“Hello,” the man said, and his smile was warm.

“You lost?” Sid asked, although he didn’t look lost. The stranger looked like he was exactly where he wanted to be. Sid couldn’t explain it, but the more he looked, the more the man reminded him of the bear from yesterday. As if he was completely at home in his surroundings. “You ought to be careful, there’s bears around here and they get territorial.”

For some reason, the man seemed to find this hilarious, bursting into laughter that rolled around the clearing and bounced off the ice so that it sounded like several people were laughing at once. They layered over and over, the lake and the trees still laughing after the man had stopped.

“I’m okay from bears. Actually am here for skate,” he said, and Sid noticed that he had a pair of ice skates slung over his shoulder. They weren’t like any skates he had seen before, the boot made from something hard and rigid rather than the stiff leather of Sid’s, but the blades looked about the same. “Is okay if I join?”

Sid hesitated for a second. He felt like he had ownership of this lake and its ice, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to let a stranger skate with him. It was stupid, really, because the lake didn’t actually belong to anyone, Sid’s family just happened to live nearby and he would escape up here with...there was someone else he used to skate with. The trace of a memory of blonde hair and a wide smile taunted him for a second, partially obscured as if he was watching it through the gaps in the trees. And then the man coughed and Sid was dragged from his thoughts. He gave him a dazed look.

“Sure,” he said. “Yeah, of course. Be careful that side though, it gets thin.”

The man gave him a curious look, but happily sat down in the snow to pull off his boots and tie on his skates. Sid watched him from the corner of his eye as he skated away across the lake. They didn't say anything else to each other, though he waved to Sid when he left several hours later.

* * *

The man was there before Sid the next day, already turning lazy loops out on the ice. Sid stood and watched him for a minute, how he was so graceful for someone so huge. He didn’t seem to notice Sid approach, didn’t hear the scratch of skates until Sid was right next to him.

“Hey,” Sid said, and then had to wobble backwards to avoid the man’s flailing arms as he started violently and tried to balance himself. Sid winced at the sound of his impact on the ice, a hollow thud followed by a long low groan. “I’m so sorry,” he said, skating over to try and help him up, but the man just waved him off. Up close, Sid could get a better look at him, and saw that he had a thin white scar marring the skin just under his cheekbone. Seeing it made Sid feel strange and uncomfortable, like it was a reminder of something that he had forgotten - not just forgotten, but buried deep down so that no one could ever find it again. That scar was a thin beam of light streaming down on the burial site.

He moved his attention to the man's clothes instead, trying to shake the feeling. They were strange too, but not the sort of strange that had Sid feeling things. His coat was rigid like his skates, as were his trousers, but flexible so that it looked like it would crackle like dry leaves if Sid touched it. It seemed a world away from Sid's own woolen coat, lined as it was with fur, and a great deal less warm. He didn't seem to be in any discomfort though, apart from the fact that he had just upended himself straight onto his tail bone.

“Is fine,” he said, pulling himself into a sitting position. “Think I'd be used to by now.” Sid didn't know what he meant by that, but the way he said it made it feel like something significant. Sid followed him as he skated gingerly to the edge of the ice. “I'm Geno, by the way. Nice to meet.” He didn't hold his hand out for Sid to shake, which Sid thought was a little rude, but he didn't push it. He was clearly not from around these parts, so maybe he didn't know.

“Sid,” he introduced himself. He hovered awkwardly for a second before taking a seat in the snow next to the man. Next to Geno. “How’d you even find this place? We’re miles away from the nearest town.”

Geno shrugged, gave him a smile that Sid thought looked a little sad around the edges. “Old friend tell me about this place, say it’s real good for getting away from annoying little sisters.”

Sid frowned. He’d been coming up here for more years than he could count, but he’d never bumped into anyone else. Maybe Geno meant some other lake. Maybe he _had_ really gotten lost. He supposed it didn’t really matter.

“He a good skater, your friend?”

“Best,” Geno smiled, before tilting his head thoughtfully and adding “After me, of course.”

Sid laughed at that, feeling like he was sharing an old joke. “I knew a guy, a real good skater, could shoot a puck like a cannonball. He’s playing for the St Pats now. I never managed to get off this lake, but he’s out there doing it, you know?” 

Geno hummed, his eyes strangely dark. Like he was lost in thought. Sid wondered if he was thinking about this friend of his.

“Your friend ever make it? The good skater? Did he get to the NHL?”

“No, he wanted to, we thought for a long time he would, but he didn’t. And, well-” Geno broke off, let out a huge sigh that gathered around him in a great white cloud. “He died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry-”

“No, don’t be. Was long time ago, very long time ago. Stupid accident, on a lake like this. We should have waited til the weather got colder, but we both love to skate so much we just couldn’t wait.”

Sid nodded. He knew what Geno was getting at. They were all taught the horror stories about the creatures that lurk under thin ice, just waiting to grab your ankles and drag you down to a watery grave. Of course, they were just made up to scare little kids away from dangerous ice, but sometimes Sid wondered if there wasn’t a little bit of truth to those stories. The way things looked like they moved under the surface, it was just a little bit unnatural, like a whole other world.

“I know the feeling,” he said, and the laugh that burst its way out of Geno was tinged with the hysterical. He cough hard, looked faintly sheepish about it.

“I’m sure.”

Geno kept coming back after that. Some days he wasn’t there, which was fine, he probably had work and family. Some days Sid forgot that he existed at all, but he always remembered when Geno showed up the next time. It became something of a game, the two of them always trying to be the first one there.

Sid found himself looking forward to their chats, the casual companionship that Geno provided, but the more time went by, the more he started to realise a few things.

The first was that he knew Geno. He didn’t just know him in the way that two acquaintances know each other, no he knew so many little things about him. He knew the differences between an ‘I’m tired’ silence, an ‘I don’t know that word in English’ silence, and a ‘I just love listening to you talk’ silence. Sid knew the different shapes of his laughter, what the set of his shoulders meant. He could tell how he was feeling from just the tilt of his mouth. And if Sid was honest, it kind of freaked him out a little bit.

The second thing that Sid realised, was that Sid really liked Geno. In fact, Sid may have been a little more than halfway in love with Geno. And that freaked him out even more because it didn’t even seem strange to him that he should feel that way. They had known each other for little over a month, and yet Sid felt that he had known Geno his entire life. And sometimes, the way he caught Geno looking at him when he thought Sid couldn’t see, sad and wistful and a little bit hopeful. Well, it made him wonder.

And finally, he was beginning to suspect that he had something missing. Something essential, something that he saw in Geno that he couldn’t find in himself. Geno had a depth to him, a history that had lead up to the person he was today. Next to him Sid felt thin and pale, like he was starting anew every day. His memories were dull and hazy, and he never felt like he was really properly there.

But when he stood next to Geno, he felt like he could borrow some of that warmth of his. He felt like he could be okay.

* * *

Sid’s dreams that night were strange and dark. He dreamt he was walking through the woods, the great trunks of the trees growing up, and up, and up, way up into the sky so that it seemed they went on forever. If Sid listened hard, he could hear the wood growing, groaning as it expanded outwards, shattering the silence with its tortured existence. The sky above was empty, yet moonlight still filtered in through the branches, turning everything black and white, like an old photograph, striped with shadows. A familiar place turned unfamiliar through the haze of disordered memory.

His feet were bare in the snow, and with every step the cold sunk deeper and deeper into his bones, until he was shivering so hard that he could barely put one foot in front of the other. He heard the tinkling of breaking ice, and when he looked down he realised that every time he put his foot down, creeping tendrils of ice would grow up and over his skin, trying to anchor him to the ground. But he kept on walking, and soon he found himself breaking through the trees into the lake clearing. 

He didn’t know how he knew it was his lake. There was nothing there that he recognised. The water lay still and dark, and around him was nothing but lurking, menacing blackness. There was no snow, no grass, no trees. Just a flat expanse of water. Something, he couldn’t say what, drew him closer to the water’s edge, and he found himself stepping out as if to stand on its surface, as if it were still frozen. He was somehow unsurprised when the water took his weight

He walked out to the center of the lake, and as he did he saw a figure coalescing from the dark. It was human, but it had its back turned to him so that all Sid could see was the shape of it. As he approached it seemed to hear him, and turned slowly towards him until realised that he was coming face to face with himself. Water poured down his face as if he was caught in a thunderstorm, dripping from the ends of his curls, beading on the tips of his eyelashes. He stared out into the dark, staring with existential horror at nothing that Sid could see. Slowly, so painfully slowly, his head head turned until he was looking right into Sid’s eyes, and right then and there, Sid understood what was happening. A scream, raw and primal, clawed its way up his throat, and the Sid in front of him screamed too, his mouth open impossibly wide as if fighting to breathe, black water pouring from his lips. And then the water was rushing into Sid’s mouth, cold and burning as the lake’s surface opened up and swallowed him up.

He awoke, shivering, at the edge of the ice. The sky was only just turning pale with morning light, and Sid didn’t feel like skating today. He sat there, looking out into the mist that hovered over the ice, lost in his thoughts.

“You were in my dream last night,” he said to Geno when he turned up. There was a suggestive light in Geno’s eyes when he turned to flash a grin at Sid.

“Oh yeah? Anything good?” A small part of Sid was secretly thrilled that they had progressed to casual flirting, and for a second he considered lying to Geno, to take the conversation to more agreeable places. But last night had felt like more than a dream. It had felt important, like a missing puzzle piece.

“I dreamt I was drowning, I mean, everything up to that point felt like a dream. But the drowning part, the part when I went under the water, that felt real. And I was so fucking scared, but then I looked up, and I saw your face right there above the surface.”

“What did I do?”

“You were reaching for me. You had this desperate look on your face, and that felt real too. And somehow I just, didn’t feel scared anymore, because I knew I was gonna see you again. Does that sound crazy?”

“Not sound crazy at all.”

Sid laughed at that. “Yeah, I thought you’d say that.”

They didn’t skate at all that day, Geno apparently realising that Sid didn’t want to. Dreaming about drowning wasn’t a particularly good precursor to going out onto the ice. What they did do was talk, and as they talked, about nothing, the weather, family, Sid came to a conclusion that he didn’t think he liked all that much.

“Geno?” he said, interrupting a long and rambling story about a Russian bar and a one legged prostitute.

“Sid.”

“How long have I been dead?”

Geno looked at him, eyes shadowy and sad. “When you figure that out?”

“About five seconds ago. I was thinking about my dreams, how I can never remember anything, and. I don’t know. I’m just not alive like you are. I’m not stupid, you know. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“No, I know,” Geno said with a wry smile. He paused, stretched his arms over his head. They had been sat there a long time, and he was stiff. “You died, fifteenth November, nineteen twenty. Fell through the ice, right about there.” He pointed at a spot near the bank over to their right. The spot that Sid had warned him about the first day. “I was at the other end of the ice when it happened, and by the time I realised you were gone, it was too late. I’m not say anything because I try to tell you once, before you were ready. Got nasty. Scary.”

Okay, that was understandable. Sid felt the sting of betrayal ease a little. 

“What year is it now?”

“Two thousand eighteen.”

“Huh. And how are you-”

“How’m I still here? Your mama, she curse me.”

“You mean with magic?”

Geno pursed his lips, considering how best to explain it. “Maybe more like with intention. Your mama was very angry with me, already not like me much because of how we were. When I come to your house without you she scream at me, so much anger it turn into curse. Lives in my bones now, keep me alive while you’re still here.”

“By ‘how we were’, you mean-”

“We were in love. I come to new scary town, meet pretty boy, is not so bad anymore. Promised to marry you one day.”

“I can’t remember,” Sid admitted, and Geno nodded. 

“I know, is always like this. You sleep through summer, wake up when the ice forms, but you never remember anything. Always starting over.”

“That must be frustrating.”

“Yes but is not so bad,” Geno shrugged. “Get to watch you fall in love with me all over again.”

That surprised an indignant laugh from Sid, and for a second the mood between them lightened. And then Sid asked “So why haven’t you broken it? The curse.”

Geno deflated slightly and in half broken thoughts, they pieced together what the problem was. What it boiled down to, was that they were stuck in a perpetual cycle. A negative feedback loop was what Geno called it. Geno was cursed to live as long as Sid couldn’t rest, but Sid couldn’t rest because his anchor to this world was Geno. Throw into the mix that Sid’s remains had been fished out of the water fifteen years ago by a well intentioned great-nephew, and they had a truly baffling puzzle in front of them.

“Think something of you must still be here for you to hang around still. The rest is in Toronto.”

Sid’s mom had moved the family back to Toronto from Halifax a year after Sid had died, tired of all the tragedies that surrounded the place. She and Sid’s father were buried there, along with Sid’s apparently incomplete remains.

What they needed to do seemed pretty apparent to Sid. There was something of his still in that lake, and if either of them wanted peace, they had to get it out.

* * *

“You’re sure about this?”

“Can’t die, Sid. Your mama made sure of that. All am gonna be is cold.”

Sid remained unconvinced, but they didn’t have much of a choice.

The ice creaked ominously as Geno stepped a foot out onto it, keeping most of his weight on the bank. It was thin here, thinner than the rest of the lake, which was why Sid had fallen through in the first place. He lifted his leg, and brought it down full force onto the ice. It splintered under his weight, and he kicked at it until there was space enough for him to get through.

Geno gave a satisfied little grunt at the carnage he had wrought, and then, surprisingly gracefully, he slid down into the black water. The water closed over him with barely a ripple and Sid would be lying if he said the sight didn’t make him incredibly nervous. 

He stood there on the bank for what felt like an age, seconds stretching out until what could have only have been five minutes started to feel like five hours. Even if he couldn’t remember exactly what it was like to be down there, down in the dark and the freezing cold, there was a part of him that could still feel it. Impossible to fight against, terrifying and inevitable, and he hated it.

He was about to start panicking in earnest, when a hand burst through the water’s surface. Sid tried to grab at it, wanting to help pull Geno up, but his own hands were as insubstantial as smoke in a breeze. He had no choice but to stand by and watch as Geno pulled himself, wet and shivering and gasping, up onto the bank. They had a blanket on standby, and Geno dragged it clumsily around his shoulders.

“Did you get it?” Sid asked once Geno got his breath back. Geno looked like the only thing he probably had was pneumonia, but he fumbled open the front of his jacket so that he could place Sid’s skull on the snow.

“Let’s hope your mama like it,” he said through numb lips.

* * *

Sid decided that he didn’t like the modern world. Objectively, he did have to admit that people in 2018 had it way better than he ever did. Transport was faster and safer, food seemed to be in abundance, and everything looked like it was designed for maximum convenience. It was a far cry from what little snippets of life Sid could remember, his dad coming home late at night, leaving early in the morning with only the lingering smell of fish to mark his presence. The modern world was different, and he hated it for it. Hated that it had moved on without him, right under his nose.

It took three trains and too many buses to finally get them to Toronto, and Sid found himself wondering how his mother had found the willpower to move the family so far. Geno payed for his tickets with a stiff, shiny rectangle that looked nothing like the money Sid remembered. He laughed when Sid asked him about it later, getting out his wallet to show Sid how money had changed in the last hundred years. The coins were about what he remembered, but he wasn’t very impressed with the banknotes or the debit card, no matter how colourful or shiny they were. What was the point of money if it didn’t clink?

So Sid didn’t think much of the future. Toronto itself felt strange, new and familiar all at once, like so many memories layered over each other. The result was like looking at four different pictures at once and it left Sid feeling sick and dizzy. He wondered how many other ghosts lived here.

One thing that hadn’t changed over the years, was the general public’s attitude to digging up graves. They arrived early in the morning, the sun already risen over the snowbound city, too early to even think about putting their plan into action. It was early enough that there were very few people out on the streets, and Geno could talk to Sid without looking like a madman. 

“Have to kill some time,” Geno said.

They stopped to get Geno food, something from a street vendor that involved fried potato, cheese, and a shocking amount of gravy.

“Doesn’t that go soggy?” Sid asked, unable to help his curiosity through his vague disgust. The speed at which Geno ate made him think otherwise, but he still felt compelled to ask. That was an awful lot of gravy.

“Is best soggy,” Geno answered through his last mouthful of poutine. He dumped his container into a nearby bin. “But better reasons for come to Toronto.”

He nodded at something over Sid’s shoulder, and Sid turned to see a grand looking building on the street corner across from them. At first he thought it was the town hall, or some civic building like that, but then he saw the words written black and bold against the pale stones. He turned back to Geno with an excited look.

“For real?” he asked, his eyes wide and grin wider. “There’s a hockey hall of fame?”

“Thought you might enjoy,” Geno shrugged, and Sid suddenly, desperately wanted to kiss him.

“Hey, hold still,” he said, stepping up to Geno. “I wanna try something.”

He couldn’t feel anything when he pressed his mouth carefully against Geno’s, nothing but the faintest of pressure, like when a moth settles on your hand. Enough to know it had happened, and enough to miss it when it was gone. He sighed unhappily as he pulled back, saw that unhappiness mirrored on Geno’s face.

“I miss you,” he said. He tried to touch his hand to Geno’s cheek, watched unhappily where his fingers met his skin and yet he couldn’t feel anything. “I miss being able to touch you.”

“We’re going to fix it, I promise.” Geno said, his eyes dark with determination. And then his expression cleared, his eyes glinting with amusement. “But first we look at old hockey sticks.”

Sid laughed at that, following him across the road. He boggled slightly at the price of entry, but any lingering indignation at the rate of inflation fell away when they stepped into the museum proper. It was like what he hoped heaven would be like, the entire history of hockey laid out in front of him. Some of the names he recognised, but the rest was a mystery to him, and he went around reading every plaque, absorbing the information like a sponge. Geno trailed behind him, happy to go where Sid wanted. When they reached the interactive games, he had a go at the shootout with semi-decent results, and then the shut out with less success. Sid watched with mixed envy and amusement as he flopped around like a fool, trying to stop the foam pucks.

But the highlight had to be the trophy room, the Stanley Cup sitting there in pride of place, gleaming fat and silver under the lights. Sid leaned in so that he could read the unfamiliar names, mouthing each one silently to himself as he did so. Some of the foreign sounding ones tripped him up a bit, like Ovechkin and Kuznetsov. 

“Looking for someone?” Geno asked, peering over his shoulder.

“Yeah, Nate.”

“He won’t be on there.” Geno said. “Here, look.”

He lead Sid over to the side where there was a display holding about a dozen long strips of silver of different lengths and widths, a history of champions stretching back over the decades laid out for everyone to see. And there, surrounded by the rest of the 1922 St. Patricks, was Nathan MacKinnon’s name. Sid put a hand to the glass, as if trying to reach back in time to his old friend.

“He really did make it,” he said, his smile stretching from ear to ear. “He’s right there.”

“Made captain and everything, stayed on to coach when he retired and won it again ten years later.”

“I wish I could have seen it.”

“So did he.”

They stood there for a second in silence, caught in their own thoughts, before Geno coughed and rubbed hard at his eyes.

“Museum making making me tired, Sid.” he said, only slightly choked up. “Dust getting in my eyes.”

“Yeah, you wanna head out?”

They spent the rest of the day wandering around the city, taking in what sights there were until the sky started to darken, glowing with orange and pink and blue as the sun went down behind the buildings. The light of the setting sun caught in the glass panels of the skyscrapers, and it made the city look like it was on fire. They walked to the cemetery, to give the dark time to settle down over the city, and when they finally got there, the stars were just starting to come out. 

The gates were locked, but the fence was low, coming up to Geno’s mid thigh, and easy to hop over. Sid felt strangely calm about it all. Walking through the neatly spaced headstones (some new and still crisp, others old and weathered by the elements), he felt like he was coming home somehow, like he was approaching his finish line. He trailed his senseless fingers over the stone names as he looked for his own grave, reading their start and end dates and all the nice things people had to say about them. There wasn’t much variety. Dearly beloved. Loving father. Doting mother. Loyal husband. You can’t speak ill of the dead.

He and Geno had decided to split up so as to cover more ground, and in the sudden solitude, Sid found his thoughts turning to what happened next. A hundred years was a long time to be conscious, even if he wasn’t aware of it for the most part. He didn’t know how easy that would be to give up, to just slip into nothingness for ever. He couldn’t even be sure that there was nothing; maybe it was like his mother always said, about God and heaven and eternal bliss. Sid wasn’t sure he wanted that either.

Really all he wanted was the man currently carting his disembodied head around in his rucksack. The man who had waited for him for a hundred years, who had stayed by him even when Sid had forgotten him, or turned on him. The man who had loved Sid so much while he was alive, that he hadn’t been able to stop loving him even when he was just a lost spirit, wandering alone through the woods. Except of course, he wasn’t alone. He had Geno.

And now he was going to lose him. Maybe it was for the best. They were both so tired, so stretched out, made thin by the years. Maybe it was best for them to put this to rest.

So it was with some trepidation that Sid approached the next headstone. TRINA CROSBY it declared. 1874-1950. Loving wife and mother. Troy, a loving husband and father, was listed underneath her, 1872-1952. And then next to them with a headstone of his own, his dates listed as 1897-1920, was Sid. Taken before his time, it read, and he laughed. If only they knew. It was clearly the more recent of the two - the moss and lichen hadn’t settled into the stone as thickly as on his parents’, and the lettering was far sharper, easier to read in the dim light. He touched a hand to his parents’ names.

“Hello,” he said, voice low. “I’ll be honest, I don’t remember much about you anymore, but I’m sure you were as every bit as loving as they say. I just have one thing to say, though. Mom. I appreciate the thought, I understand you were upset, but what happened wasn’t Geno’s fault. It was an accident, I should have been more careful. And I’m so sorry to have put you through that.”

He paused, and look around him. Geno was walking towards him, still some way off, apparently having given up on that side of the cemetery.

“I might see you soon. I might not. I’ll be honest, I’m kind of scared about what’s going to happen, if anything happens at all. I just. I just really hope he’s going to be there.”

He had pulled himself together by the time Geno reached him, and greeted him with a small smile. 

“You find! If you look for Taylor, she’s not here. Moved to Quebec with some French boy so she’s buried out there.” Geno said, shrugging his rucksack off. He got out Sid’s skull first, carefully unwrapping it from the old t-shirt he had cushioned it with. He put it carefully on the ground next to Sid’s parents’ headstone. Then he pulled out a collapsible shovel. “Sure you don’t want to dig?” he asked hopefully, knowing that Sid couldn’t. He pouted when Sid laughed and shook his head. “So lazy.”

Sid kept a look out while Geno dug, the grunting of his exertion filling the quiet of the church yard. There didn’t seem to be anyone around, but still. He didn’t think that many people would believe Geno if he told them he was digging up the coffin of his long dead boyfriend in order to return his skull and break a hundred year old curse.

Geno was shining with sweat by the time his shovel hit the coffin top. It gave a dull, ominous thud as it made contact. What was worse was the splintering sound as geno pulled open the lid, the nails holding it shut ripped out at the roots. Sid looked hesitantly into the coffin, not quite sure what he was expecting to see.

“Lost a lot of weight, Sid,” Geno tutted, gesturing at the skeleton within. “How you meant to skate with such skinny legs?”

“Fuck you, I look great,” Sid laughed. Actually, he looked pretty dead, but it was just a skeleton. There was nothing horrific, or scary about it. Just bones.

Geno leaned up out of the grave so that he could reach Sid’s skull, turning it carefully once he had it so that they were facing each other. He placed a kiss to his forehead.

“For luck,” he said quietly.

He put it gently into the coffin, joining the other bones. It was like the last piece of the puzzle, everything fitting together to make sense. It left Sid feeling a strange mix of satisfaction and emptiness. They had done it, but what was it all for? He watched in silence as Geno filled the grave back in. The moon was high in the sky now, staring down at them in judgemental silence. Sid stared back it.

Finally, it was done. Geno gave the mound of earth a final pat before flopping down next to Sid on the grass. The snow here wasn’t as thick as back home, and spikes of green poked up through the white.

“Is something supposed to happen?” Sid asked. He looked at Geno and then down at himself. They didn’t look any different, didn’t feel much different either. He had been expecting...well, he’d been expecting something, but he wasn’t sure what. Sparks maybe, or the white pall of oblivion, or the splitting of his consciousness into the great unknowable force of the universe. Instead he felt...the same.

He looked at Geno, who was staring at his hands, and frowning deeply. 

“I thought this would work. Thought we’d both finally get to sleep,” he said, and Sid watched with so much sadness in his heart as a fat, shining tear slowly rolled down Geno’s cheek. Almost without thinking he went to wipe it away, but like before, his touch was just the touch of a ghost. He sighed, long and loud, rubbed his hands over his eyes.

“I don’t know.” he said. “I’m sorry, G. I just. I don’t know. Hey.” Geno looked at him, his eyes glinting in the moonlight. His mouth was too red, his eyes swimming with tears, and Sid just wanted to wrap him up in his arms and hide him away from the world. “I love you, so much. And I’m glad we tried, even if it didn’t work out how we thought.”

They sat there together in the dark, a mournful silence hovering between them. Sid had felt so sure it would work, had felt it deep within himself that they were doing the right thing. Neither of them said a thing, and it wasn’t long before Sid realised that Geno had fallen asleep, propped up against Sid’s headstone. Sid watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, noticed how young his face still looked, even though he had lived a lifetime and a half. It was like Sid’s mom had just clicked her fingers and frozen him in time.

Sid let his eyes close, let himself drift into his own version of sleep. He didn’t dream.

The next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake. Whoever was doing the shaking was none too gentle about it, and Sid swatted out blindly with a hand, trying to shoo them away. The sun was already high, and shining straight in his eyes, so that when he opened them and couldn’t see properly right away, he thought he had actually gone blind.

“Sid,” said a voice, a voice he recognised. “Sid, wake up.”

“‘M awake,” Sid grumbled, his hand finally making contact with something solid. That something caught his hand between their own, and then Sid really was awake, sitting upright in shock at the sensation of being touched for the first time in a century.

Geno was knelt next to him, all touched with gold from the morning sun, his hair a soft brown halo around his head. He had both hands wrapped around Sid’s, and was beaming at him so hard that he rivaled the morning for beauty. Behind him, still and cold among the headstones, lay his sleeping body.

“You’re here.” Sid said, his voice hoarse with wonder. “Oh.”

He threw himself forwards into Geno’s arms, thrilling in the sensation of holding and being held, of being crushed into Geno’s chest like he was trying to make themselves one being. Geno’s hair was soft between his fingers, his skin chapped from the cold like it always had been, his jaw rough with faint stubble. And when he finally pressed his lips to Sid’s they felt better than Sid could have ever constructed in his memories, his mouth sweeter than honey. Sid let himself get lost in the feeling of it all, in danger of being swept away.

But he finally managed to pull himself back, no matter how much he wanted to curl up in Geno’s arms and stay there. This was not what he had been expecting, not what either of them had expected, and he had questions.

“I don’t get it. If you broke the curse, why are we still here?”

“I’m have promise to keep,” Geno said. Sid frowned, not seeing what Geno was getting at. “Look, we think break curse, I can die, you can move on. Is how ghosts work, yes? We break connection to this world.”

“So there’s another connection?”

“That’s keeping us here, together.”

Sid found another memory stirring. It was getting easier to remember now he was all put together, now that he had Geno with him. He looked at Geno, met his warm smile with one of his own.

“December 1919,” he said. “You promised me-”

“Be together forever.” Geno finished. “I’m remember.”

Sid leaned back in, kissed Geno long and deep until he had to stop he was smiling so hard. He pulled back just enough to speak, whispering the words against Geno’s mouth.

“I think we have some unfinished business.”

**Author's Note:**

> Why_so_drama, this isn't quite what I wanted to gift to you - I had two other ideas that were far closer to some of the prompts that you gave me, but I realised that I wouldn't be able to finish them properly in the time that I had. Instead I wrote this because I would far rather give you a finished story, than something half baked. I managed to deliver on supernatural Sid for you, and what I like to think of as speedrun slowburn. All of the pining, all of the payoff, none of the 100k words! I really hope that you enjoyed this, I really enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Also, for any of you hockey history buffs out there - I know that the St Pats weren't recorded on the cup in '22. I plead artistic licence. Also, Nate is slightly older in this au. Again, artistic licence for the sake of friendship.


End file.
